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A WORKINGMAN'S REASONS 

FOB THE 

RE-ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LL\C 









The selection of a candidate for the highest office in the gift 
of the American people is, at all times, a matter of great im- 
portance, but no previous choice has ever involved questions of 
such grave moment as that which was made on the eighth of 
June, in the city of Baltimore. Actuated by the purest mo- 
tives, and the most sacred considerations for the national wel- 
fare, the delegates to the convention of the National Union 
Party did then and there, nominate Abraham Lincoln for re- 
election to the Presidency. As a plain working man, I desire 
to give, especially to working men, some reasons why the 
choice of the convention should be ratified at the polls next 
November. 

1. Abraham Lincoln is in the strictest sense of the phrase a 
man of the people. With a single exception, all previous occu- 
pants of the Presidential chair proved themselves worthy of the 
great trust committed to them by their fellow-citizens. But 
they were not men of the people, in the same sense as the 
present incumbent. By birth, fortune, education, social position, 
and professional pursuit, they were far removed from the great 
mass of their countrymen. Andrew Jackson stood in closer 
proximity to the body of the people than any of his prede- 
cessors, and yet, all the circumstances of his early career, as 
well as the inherent force of his character, conspired to make 
him the leader of his associates and fellow-citizens of the south 
western frontier, rather than their equal companion. But what 
have we in Abraham Lincoln ? You are sufficiently familiar 



. 



with the story of his life to enable you to give a prompt answer 
to this question. His parents were poor, industrious, and re- 
spected for their virtues. 

Their son received the rich endowment from the Creator's 
hand, of a great intellect and a good heart. But they were so 
situated that their gifted child grew to manhood with very 
limited opportunities for intellectual culture, and subject to 
poverty's ordinary condition of hard labor for daily bread. 
When you see him in the pictorials of the day with sleeves 
tucked up to his elbows, and axe in hand, or floating down 
some Western stream on a raft of lumber, it is no partizan 
fancy sketch designed to take the eye, and secure the votes of 
workingmen, but a simple reality of his early life. He has 
been placed in your circumstances. He has felt your neces- 
sities. If he has risen so far above his companions in early 
toil, it is because God had endowed him with that rare superi- 
ority of intellect which no combination of disadvantages can 
depress or obscure. And now, in this great man, sprung 
from the ranks of the people, ought we not to see and acknowl- 
edge the hand of a special Providence ? What is that rebellion 
which broke out immediately upon the announcement of his 
election ? Is it not the will of a minority set up in defiance of 
the will of a majority ? Is it not a conspiracy of the few against 
the rights of the many ? Is it not bloody handed treason, in- 
augurated by a slave-breeding, and slave-trafficking aristocracy, 
for the purpose of nullifying the decisions of the ballot-box, and 
overthrowing a Government that makes the landless Avorking- 
man's vote equal to that of the richest proprietor in all the 
land ? Yes, such is precisely the character of the existing re- 
bellion. I repeat, therefore, may not a retributive hand of a 
just God be recognized in the selection of a man of the people 
to avenge the Avrongs of the people, and to put down a rebel- 
lion that seeks the establishment of monarchy and privileged 
orders upon the ruin of their equal rights ? 

2. Abraham ]ji>t<u,hi enjoys the confidence of the people. 
It is common for parties to charge each other with ambitious 
designs to increase their power, and to enrich themselves by 



<t'W®- 



the employment of corrupt and dishonorable means. This 
charge, it must be confessed, has not always been groundless. 
All men are naturally imperfect. Passion often clamors for 
gratification till it drowns the voice of conscience. Few, compa- 
ratively, are the souls who are made of that sterner stuff which 
enables them to resist the solicitations of avarice, and defy the 
power of every temptation. And it must not be disguised that 
war times are always peculiarly favorable to corruption in the 
various departments of the public service. You are aware that 
the present Administration has been fiercely assailed with 
charges of the grossest delinquency, and in a few instances, the 
charges have been sustained, not, however, against those who 
constitute the Administration, strictly speaking, but against 
certain parties engaged in the public service by their appoint- 
ment. You are aware also that upon complaint being made, 
Congress has instituted investigations, and the guilty have been 
brought to punishment. The well established cases of fraud, 
however, have been few in number, and are such as would have 
occurred under any Administration possible to have been se- 
lected from among the sons of men. Considering indeed, that 
a great convulsion, ending in civil war, always presents oppor- 
tunities to the worst men, and brings into play their worst pas- 
sions, it is marvellous that so few cases of gross fraud should 
have happened, and is a fact that ought to redound greatly to 
the credit of those to whom the people have entrusted the ad- 
ministration of their Government. But what of the cases that 
have been brought home, and received the penalty of the laws ? 
In no respect has the blame of a single one of them ever been 
imputed to the President. What of the arraignments and de- 
nunciations of the opposition journals, some of them so lost to 
all sense of duty and of shame as to plead the cause of treason 
in the very words of its own legitimate organs ; why, not even 
one of these has dared to implicate the Executive in its furious 
charges of corruption. He has been charged with tyranny and 
incapacity, but never with dishonesty. What he was to his 
neighbors in the West, before his election, that he is now to his 
friends throughout the country ; and what he is to his friends, 



4 

in one of the most valuable and important elements of his 
character, that he is also to his enemies. By universal acclaim 
he is " honest old Abe." And let me ask whether the faith of 
the whole country in the honesty of its President, has not been 
a deep source of strength, hope, and consolation in the darkest 
hours ? The very foundations were broken up. The times have 
been extraordinary. New men have appeared on the stage. 
Rascality has made haste to seize the auspicious moment. 
Treason has reared its monstrous head in the civil service, in 
the army, and in the navy. Great defeats have been suffered. 
Disaster has come swiftly upon the heels of disaster, till the 
patriot was ready to wring his hands in very despair of his 
country's deliverance. But in the midst of all this, there was 
one man whom the people felt would never betray them, and 
that man was their own President. 

3. The extraordinary and imperilled condition of the country, 
requires that there shall be no change of Administration for the 
next four years. It is well known to you, that from the out- 
break of the rebellion, one great difficulty has been to preserve 
peace with England and France, without sacrificing the least 
appearance of independence and self-respect. The first gun 
against Sumter was regarded by the English and French 
monarchists as the announcement of a jubilee. The truth as 
to the art of government, and the real happiness of the people 
of this country, had long been kept in bonds and concealment. 
The rebellion would open their eyes, and make plain to them 
their indispensable need of a hereditary crown, and a privileged 
aristocracy as a protection from anarchy and all its horrors. 
And the more certainly to insure the realization of their hopes, 
they were willing and even anxious to join hands with our 
traitors. What they most desired during the first two and a 
half years of our struggle, was some decent pretext for armed 
interference ; and what our Government most desired was to 
deprive them of all cause for such an opportunity. Consider- 
ing the undisguised solicitude of Louis Napoleon to interfere, 
provided England could be induced to unite with him, and the 
insolent attitude of the British Government, together with the 



abusive and malicious tone of the British press, it required 
very delicate and skillful management to avoid collision with 
these powerful enemies. Thanks to the good sense and states- 
man-like tact of the President and his able Secretary, our mean 
spirited foes have been disappointed in their aims, and a just 
settlement of accounts with them has been postponed to a future 
day, now, thank God, near at hand. Now, a change of Ad- 
ministration would almost certainly lead to a change in the 
foreign policy of our Government, and bring us into hostile 
contact with our European enemies at a time that would be, to 
say the least, very inconvenient. Do not imagine from this 
plea for a present peace with foreign powers, that either Mr. 
Lincoln, or those who advocate his re-election, intend the 
abandonment of the Monroe doctrine. The American people 
have settled upon that doctrine as an unchangeable principle 
of their political creed. Abraham Lincoln is a man of the 
people, and enough is said when I say that his heart beats in 
perfect sympathy with their views and wishes. The only ques- 
tion is simply a question of time. If re-elected Mr. Lincoln 
will first see the head of domestic treason laid low, and then 
he will extend a generous and gallant hand to outraged and 
down-trodden Mexico. Those who, by platforms, or otherwise, 
clamor for instant war with France, are enemies of their own 
country. Their design is to insure the triumph of the Southern 
rebellion by adding to its forces the troops and fleets of our 
French and English enemies. Now, unlike these bastard sons 
of a tender and devoted mother, the , members of the present 
Administration, and its friends intend to maintain a policy 
thoroughly American and Democratic, but their purpose is to 
strike when they can concentrate the whole might of their 
country in a single blow. Then woe betide the interloping 
minions of that crowned adventurer, who assumes to arrest the 
expansion of the Anglo-Saxon, and restore the dominion of the 
Latin race. But peace in our foreign relations, important as 
it is, does not equal the importance of another consideration 
that arises in the same connection. If the policy be adhered 
to that has been pursued for the last year and a half, the re- 



bellion can be put down. Confiscation is bringing to bear a 
just severity upon the heads of leading rebels. Emancipation 
and employment of negro troops are appropriating the chief 
strength of the rebellion to the support of the national cause. 
The fleets and armies of the nation, with few individual excep- 
tions, have become thoroughly abolitionized. Now, in view of 
these facts, tvho can estimate the confusion and disorganization, 
the weakness and defeat, that would inevitably follow upon a 
change of policy ? And mark you, should the Administration 
be changed, there would be an immediate attempt to change 
the policy, so as to disband negro troops, assume the Southern 
debts contracted in the wholesale murder of our loyal sires and 
sons, return all escaped slaves to their masters, discontinue 
hostilities, accept the terms of the traitors, summon a national 
convention, and reconstruct the Union upon a Southern basis; 
that would make the slave-holding rebels supreme in their 
government, and reduce all poor whites, and the whole black 
race to perpetual bondage. These are the dread results to be 
certainly expected with a change of Administration. And 
what would a Union thus restored be worth to ourselves, or 
our posterity ? Could the Union be thus restored ? Certainly 
not, without long years of such strife and blood in every State, 
as has never been seen in this world. 

4. Simple justice to Mr. Lincoln demands his re-election. — 
While generous and manly sympathies remain in American 
bosoms, his parting address, to his old neighbors and friends at 
Springfield, will never be forgotten. In substance he said : " I 
am about to assume the reins of government in the midst of 
difficulties that none of my predecessors have ever had to en- 
counter. So great and numerous are the embarrassments sur- 
rounding the position to which I have been called by my 
fellow-citizens, that I shall constantly need the assistance of 
the Almighty, and the co-operation of all who love their country, 
and desire that its free institutions may be perpetuated for their 
children. I want you to pray for me." All that he antici- 
pated — more than he could .anticipate — has been realized. 
From the day of his inauguration, to this moment, the exigen- 



ces pressing upon him, have been such as never filled the 
thoughts of man. Extraordinary emergencies, one after an- 
other, arose in quick succession, and had to be met by extra- 
ordinary means. There were no constitutional remedies, 
because the authors of the constitution could not prognosticate 
the diseases that were to assail the vitals of the national sys- 
tem. There were no parallel cases in history to furnish pre- 
cedents. Such a government never existed before. Such a 
rebellion never existed. Such questions never before occurred 
for arbitration and final settlement. What a position was 
the American presidency in the first months of eighteen 
hundred and sixty-one ! Everything had fallen to pieces. 
Only the name of a Government was left. The army, the navy, 
and every branch of the civil service, swarmed with incumbents, 
whose every sympathy was in the interest of the traitors, who 
basely consented to eat the bread of a Government, which their 
heels were lifted to destroy. Chaos had come, and if the coun- 
try was to be saved, there would need to be thorough re- 
organization in every department of the Government. Those 
ardent patriots, who regarded the President as too slow at the 
outset, are now convinced that they were mistaken, and he was 
right. So in regard to the great issues that have arisen in the 
progress of the war. Time, and the most careful consideration, 
were necessary to the formation of a policy that would be wisely 
adapted to their adjustment. And now that Mr. Lincoln's 
policy has been definitely framed, and is being vigorously ap- 
plied, time should be given him for the execution of his own 
measures. Justice demands for his policy a fair trial, and that 
cannot be had without his re-election for a second term. 

5. Finally, the re-election of Abraham Lincoln would be the 
most fatal of all blows possible to be given to the hopes of the 
rebels. What have we seen ? Why, to the lasting disgrace 
and infamy of the so-called Democratic party, we have seen it 
asserted in the rebel press, that one of their chief grounds of 
hope is that that party may succeed in the next Presidential 
election. And, mark you, they do not hope for reconstruction 
of the Union, even upon their own terms, but for final separa- 



tion and recognition of their independence. Now is it likely » 
that they would venture to make and repeat such assertions if 
they had not some secret understanding with the leaders of the 
apostate democracy. Have not Messrs. Long and Harris re- 
cently avowed on the floor of Congress, that they would prefer 
the triumph of the rebels to their subjugation by the national 
arms ? And when a resolution for their expulsion for this 
open treason was offered, the so-called democratic members 
voted in a solid unit against it. The whole question to be de- 
termined by the ensuing presidential election is, the restoration 
of the Union, or the recognition of Southern independence. 
Should Abraham Lincoln be re-elected, by the blessing of God, 
the Union will be restored, and placed on a sounder basis than 
ever, within the next four years. The rebels themselves would 
regard this re-election as the signal of their doom. But should 
the copperhead candidate triumph, it would be hailed by the 
traitors as a certain sign of deliverance. Will you then, as 
honest workingmen, after all that you have suffered, and your 
country has suffered, destroy the Union by placing the Admin- 
istration of the Government in the hands of men who are in 
secret league with the Southern traitors ? You have sent your 
sons to the field. Some of them have fallen. Others have 
returned to you maimed for life by the traitor's steel. And 
still others are to-day confronting treason's embattled hosts. 
The blood of the fallen, and the patriotic devotion of your 
living heroes, alike appeals to you to sustain the Union candi- 
date against the armed rebels of the South, and their craven 
sympathizers of the North. 






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